


two left feet, one beautiful smile (she’s sweet like marmalade and tastes like ooh la la)

by bisexuallupins



Category: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/F, F/M, Gryffindor Sticky, Hufflepuff Kate, M/M, Ravenclaw Constance, Slytherin Reynie, fake dating (kinda), martina crowe eats cinnamon rolls for breakfast pass it on, reynie is a bit of a disaster but we love him, wow this is super cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 19:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11607612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexuallupins/pseuds/bisexuallupins
Summary: In which there is a little bit of fake dating, magic, dancing, and a lot of stressing on Reynie's part (but it all works out in the end).





	two left feet, one beautiful smile (she’s sweet like marmalade and tastes like ooh la la)

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   
> or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   
> i love you as one loves certain obscure things,   
> secretly, between the shadow and the soul. 
> 
> i love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   
> the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   
> and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   
> from the earth lives dimly in my body. 
> 
> i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   
> i love you directly without problems or pride:   
> i love you like this because i don’t know any other way to love,   
> except in this form in which i am not nor are you,   
> so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   
> so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
> 
> \- one hundred love sonnets: xvii, pablo neruda

One week before the Yule Ball, Reynie Muldoon is beginning to panic about his lack of a date. He’s sitting glumly at the Slytherin table when Martina Crowe slides onto the bench beside him and starts piling her plate with cinnamon buns.

“Muldoon,” she says curtly.

Reynie rolls his eyes at her.

“Martina, I’ve known you for five years, you really don’t need to keep addressing me by my last name.”

She flicks her hair over her shoulder and raises one manicured eyebrow. “ _Actually,_ I have a reputation to maintain. I can’t be seen fraternising with any friend of Kate Wetherall.”

Her lips quirk up into a smirk.

“ _Speaking of which_ , who are you taking to the Yule Ball?”

Reynie narrows his eyes. “What are you plotting?”

Martina cackles. “Absolutely nothing. And if I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business,” she pauses to inspect her fingernails. “So, who’s the lucky person, if there is one at all? I must say I’m curious because it’s getting  _very_ close to the ball and I know that there are several very good-looking Beauxbatons students that are still dateless. I’m sure I’d manage to con one of them into going with you.”

Reynie flushes and looks down at his hands, trying to think of some excuse to give Martina – the queen of setting people up on terrible dates. If Martina picks a date for him, it could end up even worse than last year’s Valentine’s Day at Madam Pudifoot’s, where he spilled a whole cup of tea on Peter Costa and spent the next two months trying to make it up to him (Peter was not the forgiving sort).

Martina is staring at him like a bird of prey surveying its next meal.

Grasping at straws, he says:

“Actually, I’m already going with someone. Kate.”

And immediately regrets it. He cringes.

Martina’s face lights up with glee (or something more malicious) and she claps her hands together.

“ _That_  is the most excellent news I’ve heard all day. I must go and discuss this with her,” she calls over her shoulder, already walking away. “See you around, Mr Wetherall.”

Reynie leaves his toast on the table in his haste to find Kate before Martina does.

…

Kate is in the library. She’s reading a book about domesticated dragons and taking notes for her Care of Magical Creatures class when Reynie skids to a halt in front of her, all flushed cheeks and toast crumbs on the front of his robes.

“Kate, have you seen Martina today?” he tries to ask casually.

Kate may not be as good at reading emotions as Reynie is, but she’s known him long enough to be able to tell when he’s upset.

“No. What’s she done now?”

Reynie sits down next to her and takes a very deep breath.

“I may have accidentally told her that we were going to the Yule Ball together, and she’s looking for you so you can chat about me and the date that I definitely did not ask you on,” he says, but it all comes out a little bit jumbled in his nervous haste to explain.

Kate looks at him with an expression of disbelief on her face and he winces. A few beats of pained silence, and then, surprisingly, she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Is that all? I thought you were going to tell me you were about to  _die_ or something. Way to give a girl a heart attack,” she says, punching his arm a little too hard.

Reynie looks up at her, frowning. “You’re not mad? I can just tell Martina that you changed your mind and we’re not going together anymore if you’d like me to?”

Kate seems to consider this for a minute, and Reynie bites his lip, preparing for the crippling embarrassment of rejection from one of his best friends.

But she just laughs and claps a hand on his shoulder. “No way! Martina will make fun of you for the rest of your life and then she’ll try to humiliate you further by asking Peter Costa or some French girl  _for you_ ,” she beams at him. “So we’re going on this fake date. There’s no one else I’d rather go with, anyway.”

Reynie grins up at her brightly, and strangely, Kate’s heart skips a beat.

…

Reynie  _cannot believe_ that he brought this upon himself.

Everything was going to be fine – he would just tell Martina that he and Kate weren’t going together anymore and her reaction would hopefully involve as little public humiliation as possible.

This is much worse than anything that Martina could have schemed up – Reynie gets to go to the Yule Ball with Kate and she’ll probably wear something jaw-droppingly beautiful and they’ll have to slow dance together and  _then_ Martina will watch them leave with glee, expecting a goodnight kiss or something of the sort.

And he has to do all of this while pretending he’s not hopelessly in love with one of his best friends in the whole world.

…

Surprisingly, Martina doesn’t question Kate too much. She simply asks: “So when did he ask you?” and rests her elbows on the table to look attentively across at Kate.

“Oh, I asked him,” Kate replies, unfazed.

They’re ‘studying’ in the library for the Charms test on Tuesday morning – Hufflepuff and Slytherin share the class and although Kate excels at the subject, Martina can’t remember wand movements to save her life and needs all the help she can get.

“It was last weekend when we went to Hogsmeade,” Kate continues. “We went to the Three Broomsticks and he was giving me some tips for Transfiguration, which you know I’m rubbish at, and I thought it would be nice if we went together, so I asked, and here we are.”

Martina seems happy with this answer. “That’s sweet. I thought I was going to have to ask you for him, which would have been a little bit pathetic.”

Kate rolls her eyes, exasperated.

“Come on, Tina, he’s not  _that_  bad.”

Martina looks at her, positively gleeful. “Oh, dear Kate, you are  _so_  clueless when it comes to matters of the heart. Reynie was never going to make the first move because he’s scared of being rejected and values your friendship too much, and on top of that, he’s so polite he doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable in any way.”

Kate wrinkles her nose.

“How do you know all this?” she asks accusingly, frowning.

Martina flicks her glossy black hair over one shoulder and winks.

“You two are the biggest will-they-or-won’t-they of our year. I pay attention,” she declares, sliding her textbooks and parchment back into her bag. “And Constance tells me things sometimes.”

…

On Monday, Professors Curtain and Kazembe shuffle the Slytherin and Ravenclaw fifth-years into the Great Hall to give them dancing lessons. Constance and Reynie joke their way through a waltz, Martina dances with a Ravenclaw boy who keeps sweating and looking nervously at her like she’s going to eat him (but she’s too busy glancing at Isabel across the room to notice), and Professor Curtain deducts thirty points from Ravenclaw and hands out two detentions.

Professor Kazembe demonstrates at the centre of the room with Charlie Peters (Professor Curtain refuses to dance, so stands with his arms crossed and a thundercloud-scowl on his face), and Constance hexes a group of boys leering at her.

“Martina told me you’re going to the ball with Kate,” Constance says plainly. “But I weaselled some information out of our good friend George Washington, and  _he_ says that you’re just going as friends.”

Reynie makes a noise of distress and drags his hand down his face. “You cannot tell Martina  _anything_. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Constance mimes zipping her lips shut and waves him off.

“Don’t worry about it. Your secret’s safe with me, Romeo,” she says with her signature know-it-all smirk. “And your other Kate-related secret, too.”

Reynie blanches, eyes widening. “How do you know about that? I haven’t told anyone except Sticky!”

Constance huffs out a dry laugh and puts her hands on her hips. “Well, I had my suspicions. You just confirmed them for me, so thank you.”

Reynie bites his lip and looks behind her at Professor Curtain, who is reprimanding Isabel for snickering at a scathing comment Martina just directed towards her dancing skills.

“I didn’t mean to, you know,” he says softly, looking down at the floor.

Constance glances at him, and for a moment, so short that if Reynie had blinked he would have missed it, her expression is soft, too, the smallest of smiles on her face. Then it’s back to the Constance she puts on every morning before getting out of bed, raised eyebrows and a devilish grin.

“It’s not so bad, you know. You could be  _dying,_ ” she declares, putting her arms back on his shoulders so they can continue their dance.

Reynie is not convinced.

…

It’s Sunday afternoon and Reynie is sitting in the library with his Advanced Potions homework when Kate and Will stride in, laughing. The librarian, a rather stern woman by the name of Jillson, who Reynie secretly believes should not be trusted around books, shushes them and they snigger at her behind gloved hands.

Will abandons Kate to sit in the corner with his Herbology report, and Kate saunters over to Reynie’s table in the corner. She slides into the seat across from him with a  _thunk_. They stare at each other for a couple of seconds, and then Kate huffs and grabs Reynie’s parchment out of his hands.

“’An Introduction to Wolfsbane’,” she reads. Kate drops the sheet from in front of her nose to look at him disdainfully. “How terribly interesting.”

Reynie rolls his eyes and looks over at her, all raised brow and eyes crinkling at the sides as she smirks. He sighs to himself, resigned to eternal torment.  

“What do you suggest we do instead, then?” he says, and smirks right back at her.

Kate’s smile is full of trouble as she leans back in her chair.

“I suggest we throw Martina off the trail by finding  _her_  a date.”

…

That night, Kate and Reynie watch from behind a corner as Isabel stops Martina in front of the Slytherin common room. In one swift movement, she drops dramatically down on one knee in one of the most cliché but sort of elegant ball proposals Reynie has ever seen.

Martina puts a hand to her mouth, her usually cool exterior fading for a moment as she nods. Kate and Reynie glance at each other in the gloom of the hallway, and then back to the scene unfolding in front of them, where Martina and Isabel are hugging each other tightly. The former’s eyes are closed, the smallest of smiles gracing her features.

Kate looks over at Reynie, beaming with bright eyes, her hair falling around her face, and he feels something in his stomach twist.

They hold each other’s gaze for just a second too long, and then Kate offers him a whispered ‘Goodnight, Reynie’, with a hand that lingers on his shoulder. She disappears around the corner, leaving Reynie standing there in the lamplight, feeling happy and sad and nervous all at once.

…

It rains again on Wednesday afternoon, so all Quidditch practice is cancelled, resulting in a lot of unhappy students traipsing around the school with sour expressions on their faces. Avoiding the gloom inside, Reynie spends his afternoon sitting under the eaves in the main courtyard playing a game of wizard chess against Sticky. Constance watches them, mostly disinterested, still chewing the bubble gum she’s had in her mouth for about an hour. Will and Isabel sit ten metres away from them, engaged in a conversation that involves hushed tones and a lot of hand gestures.

The light would normally be nice at this time of the afternoon – casting glowing golden rays on the old oak right in the middle of the courtyard, little brown sparrows singing in the branches, students milling around on the grass, soaking up the sun. Instead, the ground is sodden and devoid of life. The slow patter of rain on the roof above them is rhythmic, the air is filled with the smell of growing green things, and Reynie is in his element.

“Checkmate,” Sticky says, struggling to keep a grin off his face. Reynie sighs and scoops his pieces back up.

The relative silence is broken when a pair of Durmstrang students still in their red tunics and black scarves stride over to the three of them, boots tapping loudly on the cement.

One of them, the boy, who is tall and has wide green eyes, has his hands clasped in front of him in what seems like an almost nervous gesture. He pushes his fringe out of his eyes and clears his throat, and Sticky and Constance finally look up from where they’ve been squabbling over who’s going to take the chess set back to the library.

“Um, hello,” the boy says, his voice softer than most of the students from Durmstrang.

“Hi,” the three of them reply together.

Reynie and Sticky glance at each other quickly out of the corner of their eyes and then look back at the boy, trying to look as friendly as possible. Will and Isabel are staring now, too.

“I’m Eustace, and I was talking to that girl from your school – Kath, is it?” he asks.

“Kate,” Reynie says a little too quickly, and Constance smirks at him.

“Yes – Kate!” he turns to Sticky, now, biting his lower lip. “She told me that you didn’t have a date to the Ball, George.”

Sticky bristles, waiting for some sort of insult, but it never comes.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go with me,” Eustace asks, rubbing the back of his neck.

Sticky looks up at him, slightly bug-eyed, then glances back and forth between Constance and Reynie like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.

Will chooses this moment to stand up, dropping his soda bottle on the ground with a  _clang_  that shocks everyone. He stands there for a moment, opening and closing his mouth a bit like a goldfish, and Reynie looks between and Sticky, finally realising what’s going on. He bites his lip to contain the smile that’s trying to work its way onto his face. Sticky looks over at Will painfully, and then back to Eustace, who looks incredibly hopeful.

“I’ll have to let you know,” Sticky says quietly, and looks up at Eustace with a sympathetic expression on his face. “But thank you for the offer, I’m flattered.”

Will sighs noisily in relief, then frowns when everyone turns to look at him. Eustace seems to understand, and nods at Sticky, smiling as kindly as possible as he walks away with his friend.

Later, when Reynie is sitting across from Sticky at dinner, Reynie winks at him and gives him a knowing smirk.

“Shut up!” Sticky says, burying his face in his hands and blushing bright red.

“George Washington! I never expected to hear such profanities come from  _your_ mouth!” Constance shrieks and some mashed potato flies off her fork and onto the table next to Kate’s plate. Kate flicks it at Reynie, who laughs and retaliates by flinging some peas off his spoon at her, and soon the four of them are engaged in a mini food fight that has them sent out of the room and tasked with cleaning up after dinner.

They’re lined up on one of the benches outside the Great Hall, Constance engaged in a thumb war with Kate that she’s going to lose in about two seconds, Sticky trying to wipe gravy off his tie while telling Reynie about the newest theory about life on other planets, when Reynie decides that it wouldn’t be so bad if the four of them just stayed best friends forever, nothing more.

…

Friday night finds Kate Wetherall standing across from Reynie Muldoon in the Hufflepuff common room, her arms draped across his shoulders as they twirl slowly around on the carpet. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s voices float tinnily out of Milligan’s record player, perched precariously on top of a stack of textbooks. Reynie had winced when he saw it.

The soft orange light from the fireplace casts long shadows on the carpet. It’s almost uncomfortably warm despite the thick winter chill settling in outside. Their coats lie discarded on the worn armchairs in the corner, and Kate is down to her yellow Quidditch shirt and a pair of grey striped pyjama pants. Reynie’s eyelids are starting to droop – they’ve been like this for about an hour, shuffling their way through a standard ballroom waltz, his hands at her waist and hers on his shoulders.

Reynie brings his hand up to his mouth to stifle a yawn, and Kate gives him the smile she’s come to realise she’s reserved especially for him.

“Come on, it’s probably time for bed,” she whispers, too close to his ear.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he says, and rubs his eyes before moving over to grab his coat.

Kate walks him over to the door, one hand on his elbow, and they stop to look at each other. Reynie’s face looks a bit pink, but Kate puts it down to the heat of the fire.

“Well, thanks for practising with me,” she says, quietly. “I really needed it.”

Reynie smiles cheekily at her. “It was no trouble.”

Kate looks down at her feet in embarrassment, then reminds herself that Kate Wetherall  _doesn’t get embarrassed._ When she looks back up, Reynie’s smiling at her with his head tilted slightly to the side, and he looks so happy and soft in the firelight that, against all better judgement that tells her  _this is not what best friends do,_  she leans in closer.

Kate’s lips graze his cheek lightly, and she can feel his heart beating where she slides her hand up to the back of his neck. Reynie’s breath hitches, and then he moves his hand to find hers, clutching tightly. If she just moved a little to the right –

A seventh year and his girlfriend burst through the door behind Reynie’s back, giggling and dripping rain onto the carpet.

Kate and Reynie pull away from each other in embarrassment. She squeezes his hand for a second before he leaves, and he looks at her like she’s the sun and moon and stars, face flushed so that his freckles stand out more than normal. Her hand burns where they were just touching.

“Goodnight, Kate,” he whispers, and waves shyly at her before slipping out the door.

…

It’s six o’clock on Saturday evening and Reynie is waiting anxiously at the bottom of the main staircase in his navy-blue dress robes, wringing his hands. Martina slinks past him in her dark green velvet dress, hand in hand with Isabel, both sipping butterbeers and rosy-cheeked in the glow of the tiny lanterns floating just out of arm’s reach.

Sticky, who eventually turned down Eustace because he just didn’t know him that well, or, as Constance put it, was “too hung up on his Hufflepuff sweetheart” to even think about going with someone else, is standing beside Reynie in classic black. He tries to look casual when said Hufflepuff sweetheart walks past looking dashing with his blond hair pushed back, but fails epically. Reynie grimaces and silently prays that they’ll sort their issues out before the end of the evening.

He’s just about to go and get the two of them something to drink when Sticky nudges him and nods upwards.

Kate descends the stairs, and Reynie can feel his heart thudding in his throat. Time doesn’t slow down or stop or anything like that (because secretly, Reynie thinks Kate is jaw-droppingly beautiful even without the red ballgown she’s wearing or with her hair loose from its ponytail), but Reynie does smile brighter than he can remember doing in a while, and takes Kate’s hand to lead her down the final three steps. They stop in front of each other, grinning, hands clasped together tightly. Kate leans down to kiss his cheek. Martina yells “get it, Muldoon” somewhere.

The Triwizard Champions (including Will’s older brother Sam – a Gryffindor) and their dates have their dance to the soft ballroom music the band is playing. Then, Kate extends a hand to Reynie to ask:

“May I have this dance?” with a twinkle in her eye.

Reynie lets Kate lead him to the middle of the dance floor, and then places his hands on her waist. Hers come up around his neck, and they stand there, still for a while, communicating without saying any words. The band starts playing a Muggle song, Frank Sinatra this time, and Kate and Reynie start to step into the dance they’ve practiced so many times – backwards, sideways, forwards. Reynie has to reach up to twirl Kate as the song finishes, and she laughs, bell-like against the chatter of the Great Hall.

The lights floating above their heads glow prettily and cast a golden glow across everyone’s faces as Kate and Reynie exit the ballroom floor to watch Constance dance with Rhonda, both sisters with genuine smiles stretched across their faces.

Martina and Isabel are kissing in the corner of the room under a branch of mistletoe that Martina probably placed there herself, and Reynie realises that Sticky and Will are dancing together in the middle of the ballroom floor, giggling at a private joke with matching shy smiles.

Reynie takes Kate’s hand.

…

Out in the garden, the air is still. Kate and Reynie are laughing about Sticky and Will  _finally_ getting it together when they realise they’re still holding hands. Reynie looks down at them clasped together and stops laughing, but then he smiles up at Kate, who’s biting her lip and trying not to grin.

“Good thing you’re so scared of Martina and public humiliation, huh?” Kate says, and she leans in, just as she had a couple of nights ago in the common room.

Their noses bump together. Kate pulls back for a second, laughing, to look at the stars in Reynie’s eyes, and the way his face looks in the moonlight. Then, she leans in and kisses him. Just like that.

The crickets are chirping in the background, they can hear the soft bass from the music inside, and Reynie slides his arms around Kate’s shoulders (she’s still slightly taller). This time, it does feel like the world slows down a bit as she winds a hand through his hair and smiles against his lips.

Kate tastes like butterbeer and the thrill of soaring through the air on a broom. Her heartbeat is steady against Reynie’s chest, and when they break apart to breathe, her face is flushed, eyes crinkling at the sides in her ‘for Reynie’ smile.

Reynie tastes like honey and the way it feels to sit by the fire on a cold afternoon. He’s blushing, but not with embarrassment. Happiness, maybe. Kate brushes her thumbs across his hot cheeks and kisses him again, slowly, sweetly. She moves her lips to his jaw, and his breath hitches slightly, heart rate speeding up.

Kate would be quite content to stay there forever under the honeysuckle, Reynie’s hands on her waist, the cool winter breeze on her face, but eventually Constance saunters out and coughs, eyebrows raised.

“Well, it’s about time,” she says, grinning at the two of them. “I hate to interrupt, but the band’s about to play David Bowie and I thought you might want to be there for that.”

Kate and Reynie glance at each other, still holding hands. They follow Constance inside to the warmth of the ballroom, faces flushed from the cold, hair a mess.

“Do you think we should tell Martina the truth?” Kate leans down to whisper.

“Nah,” Reynie says, a smile in his voice.

Outside, the first snow of the season begins to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> wow! so this is a little lame, a lot cheesy and was heaps of fun for me to write. i hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed creating it.
> 
> title from sally by thundamentals (if you're looking for a kate/reynie playlist you can find mine here https://open.spotify.com/user/ultrvns/playlist/6aOp10Hhu53U0MNQBL56cN )
> 
> for more mbs stuff, check out my tumblr @bisexuallupins
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
